In
Amerika There Will Never Be A Real DebateBy Paul Craig Roberts
October 24, 2012 "Information
Clearing House"
- God help them if Obama and Romney ever had to
participate in a real debate about a real issue at the Oxford
Union. They would be massacred.

The
“debates” revealed that not only the candidates but also the
entire country is completely tuned out to every real problem and
dangerous development. For example, you would never know that US
citizens can now be imprisoned and executed without due process.
All that is required to terminate the liberty and life of an
American citizen by his own government is an unaccountable
decision somewhere in the executive branch.

No doubt
that Americans, if they think of this at all, believe that it
will only happen to terrorists who deserve it. But as no
evidence or due process is required, how would we know that it
only happens to terrorists? Can we really trust a government
that has started wars in 7 countries on the basis of falsehoods?
If the US government will lie about Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction in order to invade a country, why won’t it lie about
who is a terrorist?

America
needs a debate about how we can be made more safe by removing
the Constitutional protection of due process. If the power of
government is not limited by the Constitution, are we ruled by
Caesar? The Founding Fathers did not think we could trust a
caesar with our safety. What has changed that we can now trust a
caesar?

If we are
under such a terrorist threat that the Constitution has to be
suspended or replaced by unaccountable executive action, how
come all the alleged terrorist cases are sting operations
organized by the FBI? In eleven years there has not been a
single case in which the “terrorist” had the initiative!

In the
eleven years since 9/11, acts of domestic terrorism have been
miniscule if they even exist. What justifies the enormous and
expensive Department of Homeland Security? Why does Homeland
Security have military-equipped Special Response Teamswith
armored vehicles?
Who are the targets of these militarized units? If eleven years
of US government murder, maiming, and displacement of millions
of Muslims hasn’t provoked massive acts of domestic terrorism,
why is Homeland Security creating a domestic armed force of its
own? Why are there no congressional hearings and no public
discussion? How can a government whose budget is deep in the red
afford a second military force with no defined and
Constitutionally legal purpose?

What is
Homeland Security’s motivation in creating a Homeland Youth? Is
the new FEMA Corps a disguise for a more sinister purpose,
a Hitler Youth as Internet
sites suggest?
Are the massive ammunition purchases by Homeland Security
related to the raising of a nationwide corps of 18- to
24-year-olds? How can so much be going on in front of our eyes
with no questions asked?

Why did
not Romney ask Obama why he is working to overturn the federal
court’s ruling that US citizens cannot be subject to indefinite
detention in violation of the US Constitution? Is it because
Romney and his neoconservative advisers agree with Obama and his
advisers? If so, then why is one tyrant better than another?

Why
has the US constructed a network of detainment camps, for which
it is hiring “internment specialists”?

Here
is Rachel Maddow’s report on how Obama criticizes the
neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime for violations of the US
Constitution and US statutory law and then proposes the same
thing himself.

How did
the presidential debates avoid the fact of Predator Drones
flying over us here in the domestic United States of America?
What is the purpose of this? Why are the smallest police forces
in the most remote of locations being equipped with armored
cars? I have seen them. In small lilly-white communities north
of Atlanta, Georgia, communities of sub-million dollar
MacMansions have militarized police with armored cars and
automatic weapons. SWAT teams in full military gear are
everywhere. What is it all about? These small semi-rural areas
will never see a terrorist or experience a hostage situation.
Yet, they are all armed to the teeth. They are so heavily armed
that they could be sent into combat against the Third Reich or
the Red Army.

Any such
questions run afoul of the assumption of America’s moral
perfection. No such debate will ever happen. But if “it is the
economy, stupid,” why is there no economic debate?

Last month
the Federal Reserve announced QE3. If QE1 and QE2 did not work,
why does anyone, including the Federal Reserve chairman, think
that QE3 will work?

Yet, the
utterly irrational financial markets, which haven’t a clue about
anything, were overjoyed at QE3. This can only be because what
rules the equity market is propaganda, spin, and disinformation,
not facts. The vaunted stock market is incapable of making any
correct decision. The decisions are made by the fools in the
market operating on a short-run basis. The only safe path to
take is to run with the lemmings. This strategy insures that a
portfolio manager is always in the middle of his peers and,
therefore, he doesn’t lose clients.

How
wonderful it would have been for Obama and Romney to have
confronted in a real debate how QE3, designed to help insolvent
“banks too big to fail,” can help households operating, with two
earners, on real incomes of 45 years ago, which is where the
current real median household income stands.

How does
saving a bank, designated as “too big to fail,” help the family
whose jobs or main job has been exported to China or India in
order to maximize corporate profits, executive performance
bonuses and shareholders’ capital gains?

Obviously
the working population of the US has been sacrificed to the
profits of the mega-rich.

An
appropriate debate question is: Why has the livelihood of
working Americans been sacrificed to the profits of the
mega-rich?

No such
question will ever be asked in a “presidential debate.”

In the
21st century, US citizens became nonentities. They are
brutalized by the police whose incomes their taxes pay. They,
for protesting some injustice or for no cause at all, are
beaten, arrested, tasered and even murdered. The police, paid by
the public, beat up paralyzed people in wheel chairs, frame
those who call them for help against criminals, taser
grandmothers and small children, and shoot down in cold blood
unarmed citizens who have done nothing except lose control of
themselves, either through alcohol, drugs, or rage.

Brainwashed Americans pay large taxes at every level of
government for protection against gratuitous violence, but what
their taxes support is gratuitous violence against themselves.
Every American, except for the small number of mega-rich who
control Washington, can be arrested and dispossessed, both
liberty and property, on the basis of nothing but an allegation
of a member of the executive branch who might want the accused’s
wife, girlfriend, property, or to settle a score, or to
exterminate a rival, or to score against a high school, college,
or business rival.

In America
today, law serves the powerful, not justice. In effect, there is
no law, and there is no justice. Only unaccountable power.

What is
the point of a vote when the outcome is the same? Both
candidates represent the interests of Israel, not the interests
of the US. Both candidates represent the interests of the
military/security complex, agribusiness, the offshoring
corporations, the suppression of unions and workers, the total
demise of civil liberty and the US Constitution, which is in the
way of unbridled executive power .

In the US
today, the power of money rules. Nothing else is in the
equation. Why vote to lend your support to the continuation of
your own exploitation? Every time Americans vote it is a vote
for their own obliteration.

Paul Craig
Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic
Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and
Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His
internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

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